A sermon based upon Luke 3: 7-18
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
3rd Sunday of Advent-C, Dec. 16, 2018 (3 of 5 sermons from Luke)
In my early elementary years, my mother had an important story to tell each Christmas. When my mind was on sugar plums, presents and toys I might get for Christmas, my mother would remind me of ‘fruit’.
My mother would tell me stories of how during the Great Depression, the six children in her family would only get some kind of fruit, like ‘oranges’. They just had no extra money for toys. If they did get any kind of other gift, it was clothes. But no matter how little they got, they all appreciated it.
The ‘fruit’ lecture, mom believed, was for my own good. She wanted me to appreciate the value of getting my presents at Christmas. In our text for today, John speaks of ‘fruit’ too. By lecturing on the the need for ‘good fruit’, John takes us straight to the heart of what makes Christmas, Christmas.
YOU BROOD OF VIPERS! (7)
But when you hear how John’s sermon begins with, “You brood of vipers!”, it definitely doesn’t sound like Christmas. He doesn’t start with “Ladies and Gentlemen”, “Four Score and Seven Years ago”, but John opens with “YOU BUNCH OF SNAKES!” Certainly, John had not ever read Andrew Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People!” This isn’t how you should begin a sermon ‘anytime’. John couldn’t and perhaps good shouldn’t be a pastor with preaching like this. What was God thinking when he chose John to ‘prepare the way’ for Jesus?
Even if John was a revival speaker or an evangelist, he wouldn’t be invited back after this, would he? John would have been a one shot, one sermon preacher, like the fellow who after preaching had a woman come out the door telling him how terrible his message was; how she hoped he never come back, and how the pastor shouldn’t have invited him. Then, after all the congregation had left, the speaker asked the pastor about the woman’s negative words. “Oh, don’t worry about her, she just repeats everything she hears.”
So, what’s up with such negative preaching? If you want to talk about ‘snakes’, it seems that John is the one spewing venom that scares, shocks, stings and kills. He’s definitely not trying build a fan club, or have people give him a good love-offering or tell him he preached a nice sermon. After calling his listeners a ‘bunch of snakes’ he basically informs them that if they don’t bear ‘good fruit’ they will be thrown into the ‘fire’ of hell.
Furthermore, he adds that if they think they can rest on their laurels, that is, if they think they can think that because of who they are, what family they are in, what church they belong to, or because of what they have done or been in the past, that they are ‘safe’ or ‘saved’. There is no such thing as any doctrine of ‘eternal security’ in the preaching of John. It’s all ‘burn, baby, burn!’ It’s all about who’s about to get the ‘axe’.
With preaching like this you understand why we don’t have any John the Baptist figurines around the manager. John is just too negative, too direct, and sounds too mean for Christmas. John’s way of preaching was the worst way to say anything, except that what he was saying was the truth. John was telling the truth about how bad and corrupt everything and most everyone had become in Jerusalem. This is why he’s preaching in the wilderness and the people are going out to him. John was not as much a wild man in the wilderness, as he was man of integrity and truth. If John had been preaching like this ‘downtown,’ he would have lost his head even much sooner than he did. And he did.
Still, even if it’s the truth, it’s still hard, harsh language. John not only calls people ‘snakes’, he also speaks of God’s anger and coming wrath. He talks about trees, to speak about people being be ‘cut down’ and thrown into the fire. It’s fire and brimstone preaching. It’s not polite. It’s certainly not like ‘Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire.’ Why would the Bible or the Lectionary demand that we include John in Christmas?
GOOD NEWS? (18)
What is most ironic and interesting about this whole story about John the Baptist and his preaching, is that Luke tells us, as he concludes this section, that with ‘exhortations’ and ‘preaching’ like this, John was bringing ‘good news’! With ‘friends like this, who needs enemies?’ Right? His preaching sounds much more like extortion than exhortation, doesn’t it? How in the world could Luke get ‘good news’ out of harsh talk like this? How can all this ‘bad news’ be God’s ‘good news?’
While there’s no doubt that John’s message is very ‘fiery’, there are two kinds of fire that he is preaching. Do you see it? John not only speaks of the coming fire as judgement and destruction, but John also speaks of God’s coming and even more powerful fire, being brought by the coming one, the Christ whose fire with purify hearts with both hope and healing: “I baptize you with water… but … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
We know that when God’s fire came into the world, through the birth of Jesus Christ and through the coming of the Holy Spirit, it was a very different kind of fire. The Spirit is a different kind of fire. God’s fire was, and still is, a fire that purges, cleanses, and purifies. God fire is the kind of fire that gives the energy for life, not death.
It was the kind of fire that moved the church out the door into the world to witness to the healing and saving God wants to do for those who will believe. Even though people still choose evil, choose death, and choose self-destruction, the God of Jesus Christ is the God who offers healing, saving, and hope. God doesn’t choose the fire of destruction, but God reveals, clearly and concisely, that we still choose it. John’s preaching is a warning, not a foregone conclusion. But when people refuse to produce ‘good fruit’ with their lives; good fruit which is defined as ‘fruit in keeping with repentance’, the destruction that will come, will be our choice, not God’s choosing.
I think Luke Powery said it best when he explained that John’s harsh, hard preaching becomes ‘good news’ because only the ‘slaying word can become the ‘saving word.’ (From his sermon preached by Luke Powery at Duke Chapel, Dec. 16th, 2012). John’s language was ‘strong’ because strong people were hurting weak people. John wanted the greed, the violence and the abuse to stop. John warned that such bad behavior would eventually bring destruction and judgment down on the whole nation: ‘If you do not bear ‘good fruit’, he warned, ‘YOU will be like trees that are cut down and thrown into the fire.’ What John wants people to know is that the threat is real. If they don’t ‘produce fruits in keeping with repentance’ (8a) they will seal their fate in the most destructive way. But John is not saying this merely to ‘scold’ or ‘preach’ to people, but John is preaching to calls people to ‘repent’; that is, to change their lives by changing their ways.
This is hard, sharp, and very direct, but don’t we need a John the Baptist these days? We live in a world filled with people daily images of violence and hate, with divisiveness and dissention growing, with people caring less about anything important, and too many innocent people getting hurt. We live in a world where even our own young children can’t even go to school without having to think and worry about what might happen. We live in a world where churches have to think about safety and security. We live in a world, where you can’t go Christmas shopping, without wonder whether or not you will come home. And this in only scratches the surface of the moral and civil decline that goes deep. What we all know is that life should not be this way. Such increasing hate, violence, and crime can bring a nation down. When people don’t bear ‘good fruit’ with their lives, life can become even more worthless and hopeless.
Hearing God’s call to ‘repentance’ by ‘producing good fruit’ with our lives, here and now, reminds us that God is not only concerned about getting our ‘souls’ into heaven, but God is also concerned about saving our souls and our lives while we are here, on earth. This means that God’s concern is not only spiritual, but God’s concern is also earthly, social and even political.
The God of Israel and Jesus Christ is not only the God who wants to save us from ourselves, but God wants to save us for ourselves, and for the good of the world in which we live. John the Baptist’s preaching reminds us that God’s is just as concerned about justice, righteousness, and change happening now, in us and through us, as God is concerned about forgiving us to get us into heaven. John’s stern message means the kind of world we need can ‘come down here, right now, at least around us and through us, if we ‘produce’ the right kind of ‘good fruit’.
I remember growing up in a church, where preachers often got it wrong when it came to the ‘social’ side of the gospel. Some of them meant well, believing that Jesus would soon come, so they thought Christian don’t need to worry about seeking justice or doing righteousness in this world.
In fairness, a lot of their preaching was in response to all the social unrest that was going on in the 60’s and 70’s and they felt that the solution would be to turn inward toward our hearts, our souls, and our spirits. Nothing wrong with that, but we should recognize that that is not a correct understanding of the gospel, because Jesus did not come, and it is wrong to divide the gospel into either a spiritual (conservative) or exclusively social (liberal) gospel. “Salvation is not just the saving of the soul, but it is just as much the socializing of the soul” is how the great Baptist preacher Walter Rauschenbusch, once put it. He spent 11 years as pastor a part of New York City that was once known as “Hell’s Kitchen. After working with some of the poorest, neglected, hard-working, and disadvantaged people in the city, he realized that a gospel that did not address physical and social needs and issues, was not a true gospel. He understood that a spiritual Christianity must also be social, that is concerned for not just justice for all, but also for righteousness in all. Rauschenbusch understood, like John did, that the good news of the gospel, is that at its core, the good news becomes ‘flesh’ in this world, and has social, political, and sometimes even ‘revolutionary’ implications. (See William Powell Tuck’s ‘A Revolutionary Gospel).
WHAT SHOULD WE DO? (10)
So, again, with all this in mind; that John’s preaching is to push us to change and to ‘producing’ ‘good fruit’ here and now, can we see how this can also become the most important kind of Advent-Christmas message?
Haven’t we often wished that the ‘spirit’ of the Christmas season; the giving, the caring, the sharing, and the visiting could happen the rest of the year? Haven’t we often wished that ‘peace on earth’ and ‘good will to all people’ could happen now? John’s preaching challenges us to see that it can, at least on a small scale, happen now.
This is why the ‘response’ to John’s preaching came with a very practical question: “What should we do then?” The thinking about the coming of the Christ then, was much different than the thinking is now. In that time, people believed that since God was holy, and the Christ was holy, Christ would not come until people prepared themselves and made the world ready for the righteous one to come. Today, people think the world must get worse for Jesus to return. But the thinking in John’s day was that if they wanted God to show up and the Messiah to come, they had to ‘prepare the way’ by ‘making the rough ways smooth’, and ‘making the crooked ways straight.’ This was something people had to do first, before God’s kingdom would come. This is why this kind of question came not only from the crowd, but it also came from some of the Roman soldiers and from some of the greedy ‘tax collectors’ who were collecting much more than enough. Through John’s preaching they realized that they were not doing their part, the most practical ways, to bring God’s new world into being, here and now.
What the spirit of John’s preaching still asks us, as we approach this most ‘wonderful time of the year’ is ‘what should we do’ so that the spirit of Christmas, which is the spirit of good will, of hope, and of sharing, could help to overcome the negativity and maliciousness of our own world? John’s message challenges us to ask ourselves, right here and right now: ‘What Should we Do?’ While we don’t ask ‘what should we do’ so that the Christ can come, we ask what we should we do’ because Christ has come, because we have to have prepare ourselves too, for that day when Christ will come again with purifying fire, with the fire of final judgement which will prove the kind ‘deeds’ we have done.
How do we know what we should do? ‘What we should do is discovered through what God has done and is doing’. It is the ministry, the calling, and the work that was proven and answered for us, when God became flesh. For you see, God became flesh not just to get into your heart, but to also get into your hands. The whole gospel, the true gospel is both personal and social, it’s both spiritual and physical, and it’s just as much what you should do for God, as it is a message about what God has done for you.
Getting back to John’s challenge to ‘produce fruit in keeping with repentance, the idea here is that true repentance costs you something. It costs your whole life. That is, if in this advent and Christmas season, and in this ‘sin-sick’ world, you desire to live with integrity and you want to live a life that is not in vain, then hear this more recent advice from the great African American mystic and preacher Howard Thurman, who express the true ‘fruit’ of Christmas, when he said:
“If I can help somebody As I travel along
If I can help somebody With a word or song
If I can help somebody From doing wrong My living shall not be in vain. “
(As quoted from Luke Powery’s sermon noted above)
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift to give God this advent? Christian integrity—where our words and our celebration matched our desires and our deeds. So what should we do? We heard three responses from John.
He says we should ‘share’ what we have with those who don’t.
John also says we should show ‘care and compassion’ in how we live.
Finally, John says we should be ‘content’ and not be accusing or exacting with those around, or under us.
And there are so many other things to do to invite God’s purifying Spirit into our world here, and now. But whatever you decide, for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, for your witness’ sake, for the world’s sake, for the sake of the poor the helpless, the cold, the hungry, the oppressed, the sick and them that mourn, the lonely and unloved, the aged and the little children, for the sake of each fallen rose, whatever you decide, do something. In a world where judgement still threatens, do something.
Finally, when I summarize all John’s warnings, and the necessity John’s preaching, especially in the season of Advent, I realize that John was a realist. John told it like it was. John believed that God not only wanted to save people from the world, but God wanted to save people while they were living in the world. John believed that people could do better. John believed that the people in charge could do better. John believed a nation, as a whole, could do better too. John believed people who had enough, should share, and do more. Merely preaching ‘good news’ was not enough. Merely waiting on the Christ to come was not enough. People had to live the good news too. People who wanted Christ to come into the world had to ask the right kind of questions, not just give answers. They also had to live the answers that brought God’s healing and hope into the world. This was the slaying, but also saving word from John that still brings to us, the ‘fire’ of Christmas that would ‘baptize’ us all with God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.
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